As many state and local officials clamor for their share of the billions of dollars in federal aid in the stimulus bill under consideration in Washington, South Carolina’s Republican governor is sounding a note of dissent about federal efforts to help the economy.

Republican Sen. John Ensign would like a little more time to consider the massive spending bill currently working its way through Congress. But Ensign also said he thought the bill would pass sometime this week.

David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama's presidential campaign and was cited by Obama as the "unsung hero" in his ascendancy to the White House, is expected to meet this week with Azerbaijan's president, who has been accused of undermining democracy in that oil-rich country.

At first glance, the town of Edwardsville, Ala., with a population of 194 people, might raise a few eyebrows with its bid to receive $375 million from the economic stimulus package being assembled by Barack Obama and lawmakers in Congress.

In a town where networking has been developed to a fine art, black Washington is clamoring for the Obamas. The election of the first black president is seen by many African Americans as their chance to finally sit at the table. And they want the seat right next to the Obamas.

Joe Biden was right. That's not a sentence we expect to type too often over the next four years, but it's proper to give credit where credit is due….The Iranian regime, having spent the first couple of weeks of Barack Obama's presidency preemptively scorning his overtures, mocking his weakness, and assuring the world its nuclear program is nonnegotiable, last Tuesday reported it had launched a satellite into orbit, making clear that Iran intends to have a missile launch capability on which to deploy its nuclear warheads.Sounds like a test by the mullahs.

Inevitably, the main focus of all this attention is Lincoln's views on race and equality, and his leadership during the cataclysmic Civil War. Yet given the fix we're in, Lincoln's economic ideas deserve some attention too. Long before he gave his first speeches about Union or slavery, Lincoln was a crusader on questions of economic development and banking. He cut his political teeth on conditions painfully topical for us today: an economic crash that left the young legislator struggling to shore up a failing bank while arguing for government spending on public works.